The Nintendo Switch Is Running Into A Predictable Nintendo Problem

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Smash

Nintendo

While the NintendoSwitch is certainly a hit, and a radical departure from the clear failure of the Wii U, we are starting to see signs that Nintendo is once again dealing with an old problem specific to the company in the last few console races.

In a recent earnings report, we learned that Nintendo has sold 22.8 million Switches at this point, roughly on par or a bit below the pace of the PS4. Nintendo has forecast they will sell 20 million Switches during this current fiscal year, but right now they’re only at 5.07 million, halfway through. But this is “in line” with expectations, as Nintendo expects they will sell a whole bunch of units over the holiday to make up the difference. Still, they may end up cutting it close, and there’s nothing investors hate more than slightly missing a sales forecast.

We have seen Nintendo remain largely quiet this fall in an otherwise huge release season, due to the fact that once again, Nintendo has to rely on most its own first party hits to sell its systems, because the level of power it has sacrificed means that almost every big AAA game is skipping the system, or at least waiting a long, long while for a port. This tends to happen every year, but this year feels especially significant, given that there is not and will probably never be Destiny 2: Forsaken, Black Ops 4, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Red Dead Redemption 2 or Fallout 76 on the Nintendo Switch, all significant titles to miss out on when PS4 and Xbox take them for granted, and they help drive sales of those consoles. This year, both Sony and Microsoft also have at least one solid holiday exclusive each in the form of PS4’s Spider-Man and Xbox One’s Forza Horizon 4.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar

Nintendo is waiting until late November/early December to unleash its own pair of big games, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee. Smash is always a staple of any Nintendo generation, though it will likely not outsell last year’s Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild. I really have no idea what to make of Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, which seems like it could either be a relatively low key release, or a total monster hit. I never would have predicted the success of Pokémon GO, and I find it similarly hard to guess at how this GO/handheld version hybrid will perform as a stripped down version of the traditional series using many GO elements. I think it will probably sell very well, as technically it’s the first “true” Pokémon console release ever, but we’ve never quite seen anything like it before.

But the point is, once again Nintendo has to rely on just a select few of its exclusives to carry momentum for the entire system, a problem Sony and Microsoft never have to deal with, given that they have access to so many third party games. Granted, Nintendo has gotten a little better about this, and the Switch is a fantastic place to play many indie games on the go, and it has managed to land the biggest game in the world with a Fortnite port. And yet, the power of its consoles restrict what games it has access to, and its online infrastructure is not and has never been up to par with its competition, a key factor given how many of these games are reliant on multiplayer.

Let's Go Pokemon

Nintendo

This is not a “Nintendo is doomed” prediction, but rather a comment on “Nintendo being Nintendo” after Switch mania has died down a bit. The Switch remains a much, much better system than both the Wii U and Wii, but the tradeoffs Nintendo has made and continues to make are always particularly noticeable this time of year when they don’t have access to nearly all of the games anyone is talking about.

Smash Bros. and Let’s Go could change the conversation once they’re released, but I do worry somewhat about Nintendo hitting its lofty fiscal year target at this pace, particularly with so many excellent PS4 and Xbox One games out, and the relatively cheap prices of those systems at this point. It feels like the 1.5 year-old Switch should have more momentum than systems that are now both five years old, yet I’m just not sure that’s the case.